Boundless as the Dark
by Tinhen
Summary: For Megaera... It took eighteen years to quell the girlish flutter in her stomach. Four chance meetings in that span, each one a party in its own right, each one beautifully ordinary and mundane and wonderful and significant. HGBZ, RWDM. COMPLETE.
1. Part I

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Summary: For Megaera... It took eighteen years to quell the girlish flutter in her stomach. Four chance meetings in that span, each one a party in its own right, each one beautifully ordinary and mundane and wonderful and significant. HGBZ.

Although, I'm positive this is not what she had in mind for her IATQO Secret Santa gift. I'm pretty sure Megaera was expecting a bit of school-era fluff. I'm just incapable of that. Hopefully, she'll enjoy it anyway. Three more parts to follow.

Boundless as the Dark

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Part I.

A corset. Right. Hermione wasn't sure how well the corset-and-garter-belt idea meshed with her thunder thighs and rather oversized chest. Actually, that was a lie. She knew exactly how it was going to go over. They would be laughed out of the party. Ginny, who was built like a flagpole that had two honeydews tacked onto it, could pull off such an ensemble. Ginny was almost six feet tall without the three-inch heels, whereas Hermione was lucky to hit five-three in heels. She hated feeling fat. She'd always been happy to be plump when some of her classmates looked downright malnourished. She'd never exactly had any complaints about her size, but still. At the moment, her feminine vanity was skipping past her down the street, hand-in-hand with her plummeting self-esteem.

But Hogwarts was over.

She tugged the top of the corset up a bit, the shiny purple satin bra part. She was deathly afraid one of them was just going to pop out or something and then she'd forever be that fat girl whose boob came right out of her top. She was perfectly happy to just be the odd smart girl with the somewhat radical philosophies.

She fidgeted with the garter strap on her left thigh and Ginny smacked her hand. "Stop it," she snapped. "You look fine."

"Easy for you to say," muttered Hermione, looking darkly at her friend and then turning away completely. Ginny even got to wear the blue corset. Everyone knew that Hermione looked amazing in blue.

"Shut up, Hermione," Ginny had said when they went shopping. "You know that purple would totally fight with my hair." Hermione conceded the point reluctantly, maintaining that they could certainly find her a green one, or an all-black one, or one dyed to match her hair, even. It had been the next thing out of Ginny's mouth Hermione hadn't been able to agree with. "And anyway, they're exactly the same in two different colors."

Obviously they weren't exactly the same. Ginny's was built with a gazelle with large breasts in mind. Hermione's was constructed for a well-endowed and overweight beagle. Hermione had gotten Slytherin-level surly and completely uncooperative from that moment on. Ginny had to literally Stupefy her and magic the costume onto her when it came time to get ready.

The hair and makeup had been easier. Hermione had always been a closet makeup fiend. She was a bit freaked out by the false eyelashes, but once they were attached she had more than her share of fun batting them and marveling at how very long they really were. It only took ten minutes of wailing "No! Don't put that there!" on Hermione's part to actually defeat Ginny on the issue of glitter, if only because Ginny was eventually too tired to argue or because Ginny had already practically basted herself in enough silver glitter for both of them. If their costumes were supposed to be identical, the sizes and Hermione's total lack of glitter made them look different enough. As for Hermione's hair, an inordinate amount of Sleekeazy had been administered and it hung almost limply against her neck in smooth strands. It even felt lighter on her scalp. Ginny insisted she wear it down. In compromise she refused to voice her opinion on it.

"You don't look fat, Hermione. I promise. Now get off that tack," said Ginny somewhat exasperatedly, realizing she had lost Hermione's attention. "Anyway, come on. We're young, gorgeous, famous, and it's Halloween of my Seventh Year, so I'm even here illegally. We're here to party hard and enjoy the moment, corsets be damned." Ginny looked out of breath after her speech and she herself was beginning to see distinctly the lack of sense in such a choice in attire.

"They were your id--" Hermione protested, only to be cut off by a joint-jarring tug on the arm by the other girl as she was dragged into the shady-looking Hogsmeade building where Adrian Pucey was throwing his Halloween Crush.

It was crowded already-- and they were early-- and the music was throbbing as it should. The walls were painted black and covered everywhere with glass, most of it mirrored. There were a few spots where glowing eyes had been painted to the walls under the glass, and showed through, malevolently glaring out at the revelers. The lights weren't low yet because the party hadn't started in earnest. The floor was black and the ceiling appeared to be spangled with stars, although there were purple storm clouds rolling in from the northwest corner of the room. Similarly, a cloud of wispy smoke appeared to be flooding its way across the floor and obscuring the matte tiles, as well as anything below Hermione's calves. A long black wood table had been set up along one wall, covered in various inedible-looking things. The punch bowl to the far end that looked to be filled with blood probably wasn't raspberry syrup. Pucey had a distinct and notable sense of humor that more than leaned toward the macabre.

"See, I told you we'd fit in just fine," Ginny pointed out, gesturing around to all the nearest people. The girls seemed to have all gotten the same memo Ginny had about abbreviated and black being the buzzwords of the evening. Black miniskirts, thigh high boots, and all sizes of fishnet diamonds ran rampant. They certainly weren't the only ones in corsets. As for the boys, pirate garb--among them Malfoy and poor, silly Ron-- and devil horns seemed the picks of the evening, with assorted ghouls and iconic figures scattered around. Boys were never very clever; girls were never very respectable.

Hermione's stomach gave a funny lurch when her gaze fell on Blaise Zabini, quite clearly dressed as Icarus, his wings bent and sad, the wax melted from flying too near the sun. His eyes seemed more hollow than usual, his shoulders more stooped than normal, his voice hoarser than ever. He was near enough she could hear him over the bassline, although what exactly he was telling the statuesque blonde girl in the fair-but-not-great veela costume--not enough feathers-- was lost in translation. It could have been "Is the weather nice in Copenhagen this time of year?" or "I was born a naughty boy," for all she could tell.

She'd never understood fully why she reacted in her gut to seeing him. It always made her nervous and put her on edge and the sight of him made some little siren go off in her head that left her dizzy and distracted, like someone had taken a file to her senses and left them raw and grainy. It even happened in class, although in the security of her robes she could quite easily ignore the siren call and carry on as normal. She didn't know why she reacted so because she had never regarded him as really attractive or threatening, although he had certain attributes of both adjectives. He had a strong jaw and coarse brown hair that strongly put her in mind of her own, and his voice was famously gravelly.

Ginny knew nothing of Hermione's Zabini issues. She had never noticed him at all beyond registering the dark eyes, sexy voice, and then, green badge. She was busy staring around in awe. "Pucey knows how to throw a party, Hermione. We're in for the night of our lives!"

It was an hour of relentless dancing-- in which they were at times seen with Vincent Crabbe the annoying singing pirate and Hannah Abbot whose outfit was skimpier than her own-- before Ginny was effectively distracted by a kiss from Dean so that Hermione could slip away for a moment of sanctuary out of doors, where it was cool and quiet. Once outside, she found herself more or less alone. She walked a short way down the path to lean against the cool, dark brick wall beneath a flickering sconce. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the bricks. She could feel the barest hint of the beat from inside, reverberating through the thick wall.

Several minutes passed as Hermione's ears stopped ringing and her heartbeat slowed down from the hummingbird speed of dancing. She opened her eyes to find Zabini himself walking past, apparently caught up in his own thoughts. Feeling foolish as she did so, because he always was so catlike and aloof, she called out his name. She didn't say it terribly loudly, possibly so that she could blame his poor hearing for a non-reaction. He had suffered a head injury in the war; there was a spider silk scar running the length of his hairline from left temple to jaw, hugging his sideburn as it passed in front of his ear. There was every chance that he was deaf in that ear, or nearly.

But he stopped and cocked his head toward her, a passively curious look on his face. His eyes were really very dark, especially in the moon- and candlelight that lengthened the shadows thrown by his brow and cheekbones. Hermione could feel the familiar jerk in her stomach as she looked at him and realized their proximity. Without the protection of her school robes, she couldn't stop her shiver reaction. "Have you drowned?" she asked in a breathless voice as she felt her throat closing off.

To his credit, he immediately understood and a small smile spread across the lower portion of his sharp-angled face. She didn't know if it extended up to his eyes. She could only see the gleam of normal eye wetness for all the shadow and nighttime. "I was too caught up in the light," he conceded in his remarkable voice. He realigned his head and she could see that his eyes were neutral, although by no means did they have the coldness she had too often seen there over the years.

"That does explain quite a lot," she said for lack of anything else, and she was desperate to keep him standing there before her, talking, just so she could have that voice wash over her.

He took a step backward and wrapped his fingers around the metal railing behind him, not quite leaning against it because it might further mess up his ruined wings. He set his jaw and examined her, a muscle working in his cheek. It was not an unfriendly or lecherous examination. It was somewhat scientific, but she wasn't left feeling like some mooncalf specimen. "I would have pegged you are more the naiad this night," he said. "This look is a... surprise." Surprise wasn't the right word. It sounded tinny and odd in the sentence, and especially from his mouth. The 'r' sound lingered too long, reluctant to leave his throat.

Other girls-- the more demure ones, the more sensible ones-- had dressed as goddesses and queens and animals. Hermione herself had been planning on going as a Selkie, with grayed skin and mossy teeth, until Ginny had so casually introduced her wrenching costume. "I suppose I should have gone with something a bit more suited to my body type," she said deprecatingly. She wasn't overdone. Glitter might have pushed her over, since she was short, but she had avoided it. Fishnets might have labeled her differently, but she wore black stockings to go with the black corset and contrast with the purple bra part and hotpants.

He did not bother telling her she didn't look fat. He was a Slytherin, truly enough, and their affairs were subtle at best. He did not see the need to say something many people had certainly said before and would say over and over again in a long enough stretch of time. His gaze barely flickered away from her face, to his credit or not, and she was both comforted and further disconcerted. Did his disregard for her state of undress indicate a general disinterest in the female form, or a readily established acceptance of her particular form? She didn't know which option she hoped for more.

"What were you flying away from?" she asked, gesturing at the badly bent pinions. The one on the right was at an angle that would have been painful to any bird.

"No one thing. Just, I suppose, that I've made more regrets than apologies," he said, his thin lips contorted in what she suspected was rapidly evolving into a genuine smile. Terrifying. She couldn't imagine what she'd done to evoke that.

"I realize that it's been too long, Zabini," she said, tugging up the top of her corset again. "I've vaguely known you for-- what, seven years?-- and the most we've said to one another has been limited to comments on our laziness and tardiness and idleness. It's been too long for us to be friends."

He rolled his eyes and leaned back against the barricade, wings be damned, assuming a perusal of her face and then body, only to return again to her face. He was so calm about it, leisurely, giving her the impression that standing there in that narrow corridor between buildings with her was the only thing on his agenda for the night. She refused to feel anything remotely like giddiness at the thought, and decided instead that instead of bestowing deafness, that head wound had left him certifiably batty.

Really, any sort of defense mechanism works in a pinch.

"I never said which this was, Granger," he admonished.

"I'm beginning to feel like filet mignon," she said conversationally.

"What can I say?" he wanted to know.

"Nothing. Ginny made me wear it."

The beat inside changed. Hermione could feel it through the wall. She shifted, pushed off. "Enjoy the party, Zabini," she said.


	2. Part II

Boundless as the Dark

Part II.

There were worse fates, she decided, than doing for a living what one loved. She tapped the nib of her quill against the rim of the inkbottle idly and shook her head to take herself out of another daydream. There were worse fates than being a successful twenty-three-year-old with an unhealthy passion for shoes.

A woman in a suit bumped her head with her handbag as she went past, but Hermione didn't respond when the woman absently apologized for it, and to be sure, she didn't even notice the blow. The only thing the incident did was make a single word surface in Hermione's mind. Immediately she knew it was the last substance missing from her project at work. Like any situation where one simply knows, she knew, and she tore off the first page from her tablet and furiously began scribbling on the second, pausing only to reink her pen twice in the ensuing quarter hour.

When her fit of inspiration passed, she gathered up her things and bought another iced latte to go as she left. Outside, Diagon Alley was lively but by no means crowded. It was a frightfully hot day. She had on sleeveless robes that only hit her at calf level, cool green in color, and a white tank on underneath. The heat and its accompanying humidity had rendered her hair incorrigible and she banished it into a messy bun that was only slightly smaller in diameter than her whole head.

She walked quickly and barely paused to sidestep when coming head-on at people in the street. As she walked, taking only idle care not to spill her drink all over herself or anyone else, she found that her eyes kept straying to the left into the flow of people from the other direction. She had caught herself doing that for a few years, always searching for that face in the crowd. It never happened. She knew she was quite insane for it, but ever since she was the one to walk away from whatever it was he had been offering, there hadn't been a speck of him seen in London. She asked after him sometimes. Never often enough to be obvious, and usually of people too caught up in other things to notice her interest.

Then, on that day her chemical epiphany happened, she passed him by on the street. His hair had gotten longer. He was a bit stockier than the last time she saw him, in a toga with ruined wax wings, although she supposed it could very well be all muscle. He smiled a greeting at her and she promptly spilled her coffee all over his gorgeous blue dress shirt. It really was in surprise, but really, all in all, it wasn't a failed gesture. It got his attention, at least. Attention's attention in any form.

After apologizing three times in the process of trying desperately to quell the flip-flop in her stomach, she offered to let him up to her flat above Malkin's to clean up, since she had done the coffee dumping. At first he refused, but upon looking at the state of his excellent Muggle outfit, he acquiesced and found himself being led through the throng one block down to the edifice of the modiste's shop.

"The staircase to my flat is just inside the shop doors," she explained, and then apologized again. She was surprised to find that it wasn't any easier to talk to him fully dressed than it was in three coats of makeup and a corset. He didn't seem any more interested in her general presence now than he ever had.

She tried not to stare at his backside too much as he climbed the stairs ahead of her. She was content to look at her own feet on the way up, mainly because she was afraid she might miss a step and trip and land on her chin, and only a little bit because she was following Blaise Zabini up a staircase to her flat and she wasn't even drunk. And really, his arse was nice, all round and shapely. But she didn't look.

The keys fought with her, of course, and only let her win when she threatened to go and get a whole new lock. "It's a tricky bugger. Ron has been telling me to replace it since I've lived here, but you know... that requires so much effort," she explained to him, taking some pride in the fact her voice didn't come out nervous at all. He nodded absently, already unbuttoning his shirt and trying to blot the coffee out with his hands.

"The bath's the second door to the right on the hall," she said, pointing. "I'll see if I can't find you some shirt to wear, and then-- I swear I'm very good at getting out stains, you'll see." He disappeared into the hallway and she sagged back against the front door in relief.

"I've just been fired," he called to her from the bathroom a few minutes later, as she dug in her closet for a shirt Draco or one of the Weasley brothers might have left behind some night he had stayed over after a night of drunken carousing about London. She pulled out the first man-sized thing she found, although it was a somewhat shrunken, Draco-sized tee that said 'Hail King Weasley' on it in small, rather feminine letters. Zabini appeared to have filled out at the shoulders in the five years since she had last seen him. It might not fit.

She frowned as she walked around the corner into the bathroom, connected to her room. "What did you--" she stopped when she saw him. He hadn't just taken off the ruined shirt. His undershirt was gone, and his black trousers, too, all lying in a heap at his feet. There was just something wrong with the world that she should have all six feet and three inches of Blaise Zabini and his deep tan standing in her bathroom in nothing more than tight, dark blue boxer briefs. Entirely embarrassed, she turned immediately around and stammered an apology. Any other man and she would laugh her head off and hand him the shirt. "You're naked," she said. She didn't even curse herself for sounding oh, so intelligent. Her brain seemed to have ceased normal functioning capacity.

"Well, not technically," he said, shrugging. Noticing her discomfort, he added, "It's all right," he said. She pressed her hands to her face and fought the combined urge to scream and laugh until her stomach hurt. "No, really. I'm used to being like this in front of people. It isn't embarrassing or anything."

"From the sport?" she asked. She turned and was very careful to keep her eyes locked on his, and not stray lower to admire what muscles Quidditch playing had wrought, or more specifically, the bulge at the front of his briefs.

He grinned. His teeth were dreadfully white against the brown of his skin. "Yes," he confirmed. "Too many years of being forced to drop trow. Too many years of being prodded by trainers and coaches and Sports Healers. And anyway, I'm Mr. February on the league calendar." His hands had been at his hips, arms akimbo. He reached up to scratch the back of his neck with his right hand, and that spoiled the whole thing for Hermione. All the self control she'd had in not gaping at him like a schoolgirl galloped right out the front door of the flat.

Finally, she just looked at the floor and started to laugh. "Please tell me you think this is funny," she said.

"Well, aside from the fate of my shirt, I'd say it's vaguely amusing." He flashed her a smile and took the tee shirt from her, pulling it over his head in one fell swoop. She had been right. It was just too small. It left about an inch and a half of skin bare above the white elastic of his underwear and clung to his chest and upper arms most obscenely. He bit his lip and looked down. "Yes, so I'm thinking that this isn't going to work. I'm having some nasty images of late-eighties gay clubs in Muggle Glasgow," he said, pulling it back off. And no, she didn't ogle the smooth way his back muscles moved as he bent over slightly to do it. Not at all. And why, exactly, did men always seem to back out of their shirts? Women didn't do that. "Have you anything else?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Fine, go pick out your own shirt. Next door down the hall. I'll get to working on the coffee marks." She picked up the heap of his clothes and spread out the blue shirt on the counter to examine the stain. It wasn't that bad. It would outsmart a simple cleansing charm but some Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Mess Cleaner would certainly zap what that left behind.

He was gone for a few minutes before he called, "Why do I have a feeling half of these clothes belonged to Draco Malfoy at one point?"

"Because he stays here every time he and Ron have a spat. His 'wardrobe is so extensive'-- his words, not mine-- that he claims he can afford to keep a whole arsenal at each of his friends' flats. I don't care as long as it doesn't encroach on my space for my shoes."

Zabini added solemnly: "I do believe that there is a rather large mass of his clothes at my flat as well. I can't imagine why I let him do it."

"He's perfect for Ron," she agreed, on her knees and digging around under the sink for her bottle of Mrs. Skower's

"You have an awfully large collection of shoes here, Granger. Some of these cost more than I make in a month." --an obvious fabrication. He was a half-million a year player. Or, had been. -- And anyway, how dare he knock her shoe collection? He was the one in his skivvies.

"A-ha!" she about shouted when she located the cleaning potion in an old dishpan full of washcloths and the several bottles with just the last dregs of shampoo. She smacked her head on the top of the cupboard door as she tried to stand. Zabini reappeared in the doorway just in time to see her slumped against the wall opposite the sink, one hand pressed to the back of her head, a bottle of the infallible cleaning potion in the other hand. He seemed to have found a relatively clean, if stained, medium green tee shirt that would have comfortably fit Hagrid, but he hadn't found any kind of bottom. His legs were devilishly hairy. She frowned at his selection. "Um, that's my favorite sleep shirt," she explained.

He threw his hands into the air. "It's just for a few minutes! Unless, of course, you'd rather I walk around in nothing but my tight, blue--"

"That's quite all right," voicing exactly the opposite of what she wanted. He gave her a knowing grin and it occurred to her that maybe her tone had been a mite too forceful. In any case, she considered herself too old to blush, and to avoid it she changed the subject. "So, what's gotten you fired?"

He sighed. "I was Keeper for the Arrows, you know. I was a damned good one, too."

"Wait a minute. You didn't play at Hogwarts, did you?" she interrupted. She had always been crap at listening to other people's narratives. It irked Ron to no end. He tended to be long-winded. "I'd have noticed if you'd played at Hogwarts."

"No," he said, grinning knowingly again. "I was too wrapped up in my school work. And then, two years after we left school, I was playing some stupid scrimmage game with Ron and Draco up at Draco's house in Bath with a few other school chums and I must've impressed Oliver Wood because he gave me his agent's card. The rest... history." He wrinkled his nose. "Damn it, I don't want to be unemployed, Granger. It's scary."

She gave him her usual sympathetic look. It was generally reserved for Draco when he swept into her flat half in tears because of his latest fight with her occasionally heartless best friend. "I know," she said, even though she really didn't. She'd been snapped up right out of Hogwarts.

He seemed aware of this. "No, you don't. That's all right. Sympathy's different from empathy and I'm not picky." He smiled again. He was awfully smiley considering he was the one in his underwear in her flat, and that he'd just been let go from one of the cushiest jobs in the Wizarding World. "So what is it that Hermione Granger puts her great brain to daily?"

"I'm a researcher for NeuroBrew," she said, wishing that she was something more exciting. For probably the first time she found herself regretting not going into Auror training when Ron rushed headlong into it, claiming it was all he wanted to do. Harry had been completely burned out from the good versus evil crap and had simply disappeared from the country for some time, but nobody blamed him. She had been likewise drained from all the fighting, and when Snape had recommended her, Head Girl Granger, for an entry-level position at the leading pharmaceutical potions firm in Britain, she'd fairly leapt at the chance. It paid too much for a single witch living in London, but she did love to go spend money on pretty shoes she would probably never wear.

He perked up. "They make nice potions to keep you awake, don't they?" She stopped scrubbing for a moment to give him a 'what-the-hell?' look. "You know, stimulants. What's it called? My coach-- er, my ex-coach, had a standing order for the stuff. It's blue and it makes you really, really awake?"

"Ah, you're talking about our version of the Adrenaline Infusion. I helped develop that." She pulled out her wand and said some complicated spell he didn't quite catch and the damp mess of cleaning potion as well as the remaining coffee stain vanished. She presented him with his shirt and beamed. "Thank me later."

He stared at it in wonder for a moment, bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and left the room again, presumably to change back out of her shirt. Of course, he didn't seem to have realized that the rest of the clothes he had unnecessarily shed were still in a pile on the floor in the bathroom until he was already in her bedroom, and then they were summoned with a vaguely embarrassed-sounding "Accio!" Later, he met her in the kitchen fully dressed. "I'm sorry," he said almost sadly. "My brain seems to have disconnected from the rest of me since... you know."

"Yes, except I don't," she said, taking a sip of orange juice from the glass she poured just as he entered the sunny room. "What exactly happened?"

"Well, the Arrows have the second best record in the league, after Puddlemere who always trounces everyone because they have the most money to pay for the best players, which we all agree isn't bloody fair. Puddlemere doesn't even count, really. They always win, so we just ignore them. Could I have a spot of that?" he indicated her glass and she gestured towards the icebox behind him, indicating he continue with his story. She just wanted to listen to his amazing voice, but she would have sooner died than admit it. The fact remained Quidditch talk bored her like nothing else. Not for lack of understanding but because it was just so damn uninteresting. "So, anyway, they tossed me out because I'm 'too old to play Keeper,' apparently, although I don't see how my being almost twenty-four has anything to do with that. Wood's --what?-- three years older than me. He still plays. And McCormack played until she was almost forty. I'm not old."

"No, you're not." Her overdeveloped sense of injustice was firing up. She should have been a lawyer. "If you're old, then I'm old, and I know I'm not."

"I also royally fucked up in my last match. We lost to the Cannons of all teams by about four hundred points."

She smiled. "I did hear about that. Ron fairly glowed for ages. Draco and I were ready to impale ourselves on something to get away from it..." she trailed off. "Oh, please. Don't look at me like that. Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Then don't say 'impale' in the same breath as 'Ron' and 'Draco.'"

"You couldn't resist, could you?" she said dryly.

"I would be disappointing literally thousands of Slytherins before me," he said gravely, nodding.

She changed the subject back to the one at hand. "So they canned you for losing a Quidditch match?"

He set the glass down with a clunk. "It wasn't just some Quidditch match, Granger. The Chudley Cannons beat us. They win exactly one match every six years, and that's usually against some American team who comes over thinking they're great and mighty and goes home with their tails between their legs."

"So this is you with your tail between your legs-- and so help me Merlin if you try to make a disgusting joke to get out of this I will spill something caustic on you." His eyes gleamed naughtily but he kept his mouth shut. "I promise you. I have all sorts of nasty chemicals around this flat. Hazard of the job, you understand."

"Oh, yes, of course," he replied sportingly, even though it had just caught up to him that she really was making fun of him more than anything else.

"So... they sacked you because you lost to the Cannons. Is that what I'm to get out of all of this?"

"Yes," he said, beginning to sound exasperated. She was beginning to think she liked him better in his underwear, because at least then she could look at him and that made up for what was apparently now lacking. She didn't like to be forced into reevaluating her opinions of people to lower levels. At school she'd always rather respected him as having quite a mind locked up inside his quiet head, and then the last time they spoke he stunned her practically stupid with his brilliant Icarus costume and his quick-on-the-uptake responses. But now she was reeling from some pathetically weak conversation from the run-of-the-mill Quidditch jock and she sincerely didn't understand. The Body Snatchers seemed to have swapped his brain with that of someone far less worthy. She started to laugh but she doubted he would even get the joke.

"Enjoy that party, Zabini," she said cryptically and disappeared into the bowels of her flat, leaving him to depart of is own accord.


	3. Part III

Boundless as the Dark

Part III.

"No, 'Ionie," he insisted, looking up at her as beseechingly as only a five-year-old could. "Daddy says that I can't. _Spiders_." His blue eyes got very round as he emphasized the word.

Hermione tried very hard not to roll her own eyes. "Exie, darling," she said, scooping him up into her arms and nuzzling his neck until he giggled and shrieked, "your Daddy isn't here." She gave him a conspiratorial wink and then spun around so that they were facing the public swimming pool and all its denizens, to show him that there was no room for spiders to lurk. Several other children Exie's age on up were running around on a patch of grass, screaming something to the effect of "I'll get my mummy's wand after you, Fossil-face!" The moment his eyes lighted upon the crowd, he began struggling against her and pointing, effectively distracted from his earlier misgivings about the pool. "Very well," she said, setting him on his feet, at which point he ran over to join the game. "And he's off," she said under her breath. A mother who was supervising the tornado pitch of little bodies took note of her newcomer and sought out his guardian. Hermione waved to her, recognizing a former classmate in Su Li, who waved back and then barked some reprimand at a boy with darker hair than Exie's.

Satisfied that her godson was in capable hands, Hermione stretched her arms over her head and set about stripping down to her bathing suit to languish about in the sunshine, from under the liberal protection of sunblock, to work on a tan that always came quickly for her in her youth. At thirty, her melanin seemed to be revolting against her, but perhaps she could blame it on carrying Exie. Something about having a child with Weasley genes inside of her... it fairly convinced her that any of her own mother's Greek brownness had been effectively overridden. Even if such a theory disagreed with biology. She was a witch, after all. She could pick and choose which parts of Muggle science to follow. After all, everyone knew that certain species were never extinct as Muggles thought, and cancer could be cured with a simple anti-mutation draught.

She slid her feet back into her flip flop sandals and wrapped a fluffy beach towel around her waist to go buy an overpriced bottle of butterbeer and a witch's gossip rag because she seemed to have forgotten her current book on breakthroughs in potion brewing with particular emphasis on work both amino acids and full proteins. She was working on a 'Something Big,' as Draco derisively called it when she got into her frenzied projects at NeuroBrew and no one saw her for weeks. It had taken quite a lot of cajoling on Draco's part, literal and full-on begging on Ron's, and one puppy-dog look from Exie to convince her to take him for the day. She blamed Ron especially for making her forget her book, and it wasn't as if she could just leave the pool with Exie there to go get it, even if he was under Su Li's watchful eye. Damn them anyhow, being selfish enough to expect a godmother to take her godson-- who she happened to have given birth to--_ out_ so they could have a day _in_.

She was halfway around the corner and well into the shade of a huge tree when she almost stepped on a little girl with dark curls and got her nose flattened against the chest of the man connected to said little girl's hand. Peeling herself backwards, she muttered, "Nice work, Granger. Not watching where you're going at all."

"I couldn't put it better myself."

The voice. She choked and looked up, spot-on deer-in-headlights (as if he'd get the reference). That voice that had haunted her most deeply repressed and also cherished thoughts since she was about fifteen. And Merlin, did he smell amazing.

"Er, afternoon, Zabini," she managed, only sounding slightly shaken up, all considering.

He cracked his crooked smile and eyed her choice in swim suit. She met his look, daring him to comment on it in front of his child. In the end, it didn't matter, for it was the little girl with the enormous blue eyes who beat him to the punch. "You got ducks on your boobies!" the girl exclaimed.

Rather than turning red, as she might have done even four years ago, Hermione knelt down and fixed the girl with a mock serious look. "Have I?" she asked in a very serious tone.

The girl let go of her father's hand and squinted back. "Yep, you do. That's nifty. My Mum doesn't got enough to--"

Blaise patted her on her head to stop her, laughing nervously to himself. Hermione looked up at him through her lashes, as if to say, 'Let me handle it, will you?' He raised his eyebrows and withdrew his hand, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I see you have broomsticks and Quaffles on your swimsuit," she said to the girl. "What do you think of that?"

The girl seemed to carefully consider her answer. "Well, my dad played 'Ditch and I like to ride around on my toy broomstick." She bobbed her head to confirm herself.

"Don't you think it's dangerous? Or scary?"

The girl shook her head furiously, her hair flying all over the place. "Oh, no. It's the funnest thing in the world." Hermione smiled broadly and looked up at Blaise again to see a similar grin on his face. Although, that may have had more to do with the impressive view he had down Hermione's cleavage. She wasn't going to split infinitives, though, and she was too focused on his adorable little girl to give it much consideration.

"Do you want to play Quidditch when you grow up?" Hermione asked.

The girl nodded fervently. "Oh, yes, oh, yes. I'm gonna play at Hogwarts for Slytherin-- Mum and Dad were both Slytherins. And Dad played on the Arrows in the 'fessionals. I got to play 'Ditch."

Hermione straightened back to her full height. The girl saw, from around Hermione's side as she stood up, the bunch of children playing on the grass. She glanced up at her father, he looked over to see Su Li monitoring the bunch and nodded his permission. "And she's off," he said to himself as she dodged a waiter serving lemonade to an old witch in pedal pushers and a cropped emerald robe, a brass lawn chair, and two teenage boys with matching blond mops of hair. "What's her name?" she asked as they watched his daughter's antics.

He smiled faintly with his eyes distant and even more warmly when he fixed his gaze on Hermione's face. "Noël," he replied simply. "Noël, because at Christmas her name is everywhere."

"That's wonderful. How is Pansy?" she inquired after who she supposed was the girl's mother. He had been seeing Pansy Parkinson about seven years ago, and Noël appeared to be about that old, not to mention that she had a bit of the doggish cast to her features.

He shrugged. "Last I talked to her directly she was in down Rio on break from the dig on the Amazon in May. I was over visiting Draco two weeks ago and caught the end of a conversation between them over the Floo, but it wasn't a very clear connection so I didn't catch much I could make out." He shrugged again. "I don't care. She left us five years ago to get her fingernails dirty in archaeology and she never looked back." He scratched the back of his head. "And anyway, I get Noël all to myself this way." He grinned, but it wasn't an entirely mirthful smile.

She nodded sympathetically. "Draco talks about her constantly. He misses her desperately. She was his best friend, you know. The only one of their little ring that stood by him when he came out."

"Oh, I know," said Blaise irritably. "And speaking of Draco, I left Noël with my mum for a few minutes to pop over to his and Ron's to see if maybe Exie wanted to come out with us. Of course, as I Apparate in, Ron is crossing the foyer stark naked on his way to the kitchen to get more chocolate syrup. I almost scream, he does scream. Draco comes running down the steps in his bathrobe to find me standing there, horrified, and Ron holding his hands over his private bits looking very red. So I say, 'You two are capable wizards. Could a Summoning Charm have caused you that much trouble?' and they look at me like _I'm_ the crazy one." He threw his hands up in the air. "So I explained my idea about taking Exie out to the pool with Noël and I and Ron says, 'Oh, we already pawned him off on Hermione for the day.'"

Hermione blinked and it took her a moment or two to recover from the absolute deluge of words coming at her. She really was irrevocably obsessed with is voice. "I've never heard you say so much at once, I don't think," she said in measured tones. He cracked another nervous smile, a flash of white teeth against the dark tan of his skin. She stared straight ahead at his shirt for a moment before it registered that it was just a FCUK tee and it didn't say what she thought it said at first glance. "Muggle fixation?" she asked, gesturing to it.

He shook his head, then nodded. "Well, it's hard to explain, actually. I was dating this wonderful Muggle woman named Sophia, except on the fourth date she takes me to a football game and she's screaming as loud as anyone, and then at the nice French restaurant I take her to, she looks me square in the eye and says, 'I was born a boy. Does that weird you out?' Needless to say I got up and left. But I kept the shirt I bought her. It's a nice shirt. It shocks people."

"You're freakishly talkative today," she observed, adjusting the towel looped around her waist without breaking eye contact.

"Yeah, I can't figure out what it is. Maybe I was just knocked for a loop by seeing those parts of Weasley only Draco should be seeing." He turned very round eyes on her. "Hermione, it was frightening."

She shrugged. "I've seen Ron naked before. I didn't find it all together horrifying."

"But I'm a heterosexual male. It was horrifying."

"Well, he does have quite a big--"

He clamped his hand over her mouth and looked seriously into her eyes bracing her shoulder with is free hand. "I do not need to think of such things." She tried to say something but obviously he couldn't make out a word of it. "You're not going to talk about Ron Weasley's nether regions any more, are you?" An old wizard walking past caught that last bit and gave them both a very odd look. Blaise shooed the man on with a dark look. "Right?" She tried to say something again and again it was too muffled by his hand. "We understand?" She nodded and he let go.

"Circe," she hissed, bringing her hand to her jaw to massage a kink out of it, "could you have warned me, maybe, to what you were about to do? You think?" She frowned at him.

"Possibly." He shrugged. "So what have you been up to since you spilled coffee all over me?"

"Well, I carried to term Ron and Draco's kid. Actually, he's biologically mine and Ron's, but can you see me as a mother? Really?" She scoffed and didn't notice the accepting look he gave her. He'd seen how she was with his daughter. That seemed to him the mark of a good mother, and it was definitely more than Noël ever got from her own. "I'm an unofficial aunt fourteen times over before my thirty-first birthday, which is in three weeks. I live in a Muggle neighborhood now, not on Diagon Alley. Uh..." she trailed off, unable to think of anything else interesting that might have happened to her in the last seven years. "You?"

He pointed to the grass where Exie and Noël and one of Dean Thomas' two daughters (Hermione could never tell one from the other, and they were born three years apart) were engrossed in some discussion. "Well, a few weeks after the incident with the Arrows, Pansy comes over to my flat with a phial of blue liquid, sobbing, telling me she's pregnant and she doesn't know what to do. She graduates uni in June, she can't take care of a baby _and_ finish off her thesis. So I become the quintessential single dad while she traipses around the world digging up bones and desecrating graves. I haven't seriously dated anyone since, since I don't think Noël really counts as a date." He grimaced at his own story and laughed in that self-deprecating way only a devoted father can. "That sounds really pathetic, doesn't it?"

Hermione shrugged but nodded. "Yeah, it kind of does. But no more pathetic than my story. At least you aren't Fag-Hag Extraordinaire to the point where you donate an egg and nine months to your best friends' drive to have a real family."

"If I had a lesbian couple for friends I would completely volunteer my sperm," he maintained looking moderately cheerful.

She shook her head. "It doesn't count, Zabini, darling. You're not the one who has to squeeze a watermelon-sized thing through a hole the size of a lemon nine months down the road, when the whole idea no longer sounds appetizing and you just want to claw out the eyes of whichever one of the boys suggested it in the first place."

"Draco said you offered to carry the baby."

"Shut up." She glanced down at her state of dress and took in his jeans and tee shirt. "Well," she said conversationally, deftly changing the subject, "have you noticed that each time we've met since Hogwarts, one of us is dressed only in abbreviations?"

"By that you mean in his or her skivvies, right?" he said, eyeing her up and down again.

She blushed, willing herself not to read too much into his action. Because that could end very badly. "Well, you could say."

"Speaking of which," he said with a grin, "your suit is quite... charming. You really have got 'ducks on your boobies.' Wherever did you find a bathing suit for a grown woman with ducks all over it?"

"Oh, it was difficult, let me assure you," she said. She beat down the fifteen-year-old flutter by sheer brute strength and met his gaze without much of a waver. She was determined to be witty and jocund. Ooh, and blithesome. She loved the word blithesome. He laughed. It was all so degage all of a sudden, and she had the nearly insurmountable urge to beat her head on the wall to her right.

"I have an odd question for you," he said suddenly as she was looking for an escape from the situation.

"Okay," she said, looking all around them and anywhere but him.

He cleared his throat. "Did you spill your coffee on me on purpose? I mean, back in, what? 2004? I meant to ask then. It seemed almost too perfect that you did. I meant to-- I should have-- What I mean to say is that I've-- Bollocks, never mind." He looked away, and Hermione decided that he must be flushed even though she couldn't see it for his tan and the shadows. He nervously flattened his hair. She raised an eyebrow at him, wondering why she was the one in the bikini but she didn't feel a bit off while he was clearly embarrassed at something. Maybe he was embarrassed because of her bikini. She looked down at herself, wondering if maybe she should have gone with the one piece.

"Hermione?" he said, testing out her name and then smiling. She started and looked up at him curiously. "Did you?"

"No, of course not. That would involve" --she scrunched up her nose-- "something like devious intent on my part. I don't think that far ahead anymore. What makes--"

"'Ionie, 'Ionie!" She stopped abruptly to see Exie tugging on the corner of her towel looking very anxious, and what ever she had been asking went blowing in the wind.

"What's the matter?" she asked, Zabini immediately forgotten in the wake of Exie's crisis.

The man smiled at her and made his way to the knot of now stationary children on the grass. "Enjoy your party, Granger," he said in parting.


	4. Part IV

Boundless as the Dark

Part IV.

Saying her farewells to the men at her table, Hermione pulled on her cloak and carefully wrapped her blue scarf around her throat. "You know--" Draco began, smiling deviously.

"I know," she snapped, interrupting him. "Goodbye, Exie, dear," she said and bent down to kiss her godson on the cheek. "Be good."

He rolled his eyes. "It's just Xavier now," he mumbled. "Since I'm in Hogwarts now, I decided that Exie sounded like a baby name and I needed to sound more grown up since I'm a Second Year." She ruffled his hair and told him firmly that, to her at least, he would always be 'ickle Exie.' He tried his best to look surly, fixing his hair, but it just wasn't happening.

"I'll see all of you at Christmas, then," she said. "Two o'clock. Remember." She looked at Draco because she knew Ron would never remember the time. He was good at other things but trivial facts quite escaped him. The blond nodded and shooed her out of the café, but not without another attempt at a crack on her scarf. "It's not that bad!" she insisted on her way into the snowblind that was Hogsmeade. The school had just let out for the holiday break and Draco and Ron had invited her into town to have some chocolate and brioche at the Drowning Mermaid just off High Street, an invitation at which she jumped.

She agreed and got ready to leave, only to find that it was a veritable blizzard outside. Draco and Ron, who lived in a comfortable London suburb, couldn't have known how inclement the weather was, but she knew that it was too late to renege. And anyway, she didn't feel like it. Snow was one of her favorite things. It seemed like a lifetime ago since she'd first seen Hogsmeade frosted with snow and she was eager to get out and see it before it was destroyed in the chaos of Christmas Eve, when all the Wizarding folk of northern Great Britain would converge upon the town for last-minute bits and pieces for their celebrations the next day. Christmas Eve was Hermione's least favorite day of the year, spanning back to being a child sitting squashed between her mother and grandmother at Mass at midnight listening to service in Greek. Her grandmother always smelled strongly of ouzo and Hermione had retained an intense disliking for licorice ever since.

She ducked into the bookshop and had a quick conversation about a book she'd ordered with the clerk, Samantha, but it wasn't in yet. As she was unwinding her scarf, she made her way toward the back of the store where there was a small selection of Muggle fiction. A broad-shouldered, dark-haired man and his tall, dark-haired daughter were already there, apparently arguing over the book the girl was holding.

"No, Dad," she said in a typical teenager's exasperated tone, the tone reserved for when her parents don't understand, "I actually have to read it for class."

He disagreed. "I was in Muggle Studies, Elle, and I know we didn't read that in Third Year. Maybe at the NEWT level. But not at thirteen. I'm not buying it."

"Daaa-ad," the girl whined, stamping her foot on the ground and holding the book as though she would hit him on the arm with it. He turned to the side and gave her an 'I'm not amused' look, arms crossed over his chest.

"I could just write to your teacher, Elle. That would resolve all of this right now." The girl's eyes grew large and he knew that he had her. "That's what I thought. Now pick out what you're actually supposed to read and go wait up front. I'm still looking for that book Draco recommended."

The girl glowered and pulled a much thinner volume by one of the Brontë sisters from the second shelf, heading for the front. The man moved down the row a little, toward the end of the alphabet and Hermione took up the girl's vacated spot at the beginning.

"Fancy seeing you here," she said to him, smiling but keeping her eyes on the spines of the books.

He started and glanced around, spotting her and returning her smile. "Fancy that," he agreed. He reached out a hand to her which she shook. "How have you been of late, Ms. Granger?"

"Oh, the same as ever. I'm getting over a little bout of flu but nothing much." She grimaced at the mistruth and he caught it, along with the fact her cheeks were noticeably more hollow than he remembered. "How have you been?"

He shrugged and reshelved the offending book Noël had tried to con him into buying. "Been busy at the Ministry, among other things. I had to do Pansy's funeral myself last year but not a lot since."

"Yeah, I meant to go to that but I had tr-- something came up I couldn't avoid." She thumbed the pages of a yellowed Dan Brown novel.

"Draco said you were there in spirit."

Ron had been with her at the hospital that morning, playing concerned best friend. He had seemed awkward in what had always been Harry's role where she was concerned. But Harry was off somewhere in Asia and hadn't been heard from since before Exie-- Xavier was born. But that was done with now, wasn't it?

"I suppose," she said, smiling. "I didn't know Pansy all that well, though, so I would have felt out of place being there anyway." She put the book back and pulled out a thick one by Eliot. "How is Noël?"

"Tall," he said, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder. "I know I'm not exactly tall myself, and Pansy was your size, so I don't know where she gets it. Must be good nutrition or something. Anyway, would you like to have coffee later? I was thinking that we ought to take advantage of this meeting like we didn't the last few times. You look like you need a non-Malfoy, non-Weasley friend and I know I do." He laughed and, even at thirty-six looked as nervous as she imagined Exie might talking to a pretty Seventh Year. She was his age and she felt so much older.

She nodded and put back the Eliot. "I think that would be lovely. I'll have to go home and feed my dog, but I can meet you back at the Drowning Mermaid in an hour."

"That would work. I have to go home and feed the child and set her to doing some menial labor around the house." He straightened his own scarf, a nice oatmeal-colored cable knit, the ends of which barely touched his navel. Must be nice.

"I'll see you in an hour, then," she said.

She didn't buy anything, which may have been the first time in her entire life to go into a book shop and not buy a single book. Samantha, the clerk, waved good-bye to her and said something about the book being in by next Tuesday, which seemed like an awfully long way off from a Friday, especially since Hermione had ordered it on the sixth and it was only coming in from a shop in Ulster.

The snow had tapered off a little since she'd entered the store. Now it was just pretty instead of driving and dangerous. She wound her scarf back around her face and trudged down High Street to the Floo hub. Her home was near the Cornish city of West Curry in a small town with one post office and a small pub named after a walrus.

Her dog, a three-legged puff ball that barely reached her knees, was her most devoted companion. Spritzer was some sort of Pekingese mix, the breeder said, born of a champion mother and "some dumb mutt." She wondered if she had played her cards differently earlier in life, she could be the champion mother and the strange dog her own child. At this point in her life, Hermione was left to wonder if maybe that wouldn't have been a bad thing.

Spritzer was immediately underfoot as she stepped out of the fire, brushing off ashes, yapping at her cheerfully as small dogs are wont to do. "Yes, darling," she said, squatting to rub the dog's nose. "It's chow time."

She unwound the choking scarf and left it draped over the back of her sofa, covered by the camel-colored cloak that she shed second. The house was really too warm.

Her kitchen was small and quaint, painted yellow and white with stainless appliances. There was a scrubbed butcher block table against the wall with the window to her back lawn, inundated with unopened post and a horrible stack of medical books, both Muggle and Wizarding. The chairs arranged around it didn't match perfectly but it added to the room's charm.

She got down a glass and filled it with water, drinking half of it and then setting the glass on the counter next to the sink. Then she opened the pantry cupboard next to the refrigerator to find some dog food, brand name Bow Wow Chow. Spritzer watched her avidly from his place on one of the butcher table's assorted chairs. She used her wand to open the tin and, feeling suddenly ill, she levitated it over to Spritzer's dish by the back door and let it pour out by way of gravity.

She patted the dog on his head as he crouched greedily over the bowl and then went upstairs to change into more presentable clothes. Draco had rather rudely popped by her place at eleven forty-five and ordered her be at the café at half past noon, and she had dressed accordingly: in a hurry. She realized as she was yanking it over her head that she had put her sweater on backwards. It was a lovely sweater, the exact color of grape jelly and luxuriously cable knit in a cashmere blend. Her chinos were creased and possibly coffee-stained on the knee. Her socks didn't match, and her undershirt had a peculiar, very bright yellow spot just above her navel.

She was brushing her teeth when she walked past the clock in her bedroom, saw the time, and immediately spit her toothpaste all over her bedspread. She had left Hogsmeade at three-fifty, agreeing on a return in an hour. And, somehow, she had managed to waste nearly an hour and a half...

She rinsed inhumanly fast, pulled her cloak back on and said bollocks to the hated scarf, leaving it strewn across the sofa as she grabbed a handful of Floo powder and shouted "Drowning Mermaid!" when the flames turned green.

Blaise Zabini was standing to the side of the fireplace when she stepped out, coughing and brushing soot off of herself for the umpteenth time that day. She hated Apparition, but the ashes got old after a while. He looked older than she remembered, but it had been six years since she'd got a good look at him, and he was still disgustingly handsome. Not nearly as tan as she remembered; in fact, he looked almost wan. And he was wearing an incredible balsam green Oxford she could just imagine watching him shuck away. And a tie. Had he been wearing that earlier that day? She looked down at herself, at her simple jeans and old Weasley sweater, and grinned.

"It seems that we're both fully dressed," she said.

He blinked and then looked at his own clothes and grinned. "This must be the first time since we were wearing Hogwarts robes. Oh, and excellent greeting," he added, smirking.

Feeling eighteen again, she stuck her tongue out at him.

"I've got a table already," he said. "I was just over there waiting for you."

"That's sweet," she said, giving him a small, almost bashful smile, at which he rolled his eyes and led her to the other side of the café. He'd picked a table in front of the picture window overlooking the whole of Hogsmeade, as the terrain elevated as one neared the abandoned turnstile. She could just see it, covered in snow and nearly hidden, and she smiled at the memories more than half of her lifetime away.

He sat down across from her, steepled his fingers, looked at her intensely. "Care to tell me what's wrong with you?" he said. It was a demand but spoken more softly, or perhaps the smoothness of his voice just precluded the harshness that might have been apparent in, say, Draco's voice.

She closed her eyes. She didn't want to talk about it. She knew she couldn't lie but she couldn't tell any kind of truth if there wasn't any truth to tell. Finally she decided that flippancy was the way to go, no matter how transparent he might find it. "Nothing major," she said, trying desperately to sound offhand. She found herself trying to be offhand quite a lot. She hoped that with practice one day she might become proficient at it, but a part of her knew she wouldn't.

He looked at her and if she'd been a poet she would have called it piercing. But she only worked with words superficially; she was a scientist and she knew more about the chemicals rolling around in his head and his eyes than the nuances of emotions he was emitting. "That's not true," he said simply. "Draco and Ron were talking about something once when Elle and I were over at their place. It would have been rude of me to ask after someone I've only seen five times since we left Hogwarts, but it's been clawing at me, believe me."

"Four," she said softly.

He blinked again. "What?"

"Four," she repeated, her voice thin. "We've only met four times since Hogwarts."

He smiled. He opened his mouth to reply but a waitress approached to take their orders. "You must try their eggnog," he said, turning back to Hermione. "It's quite remarkable."

Hermione shook her head. "I don't much care for eggnog," she replied.

"I refuse to accept that," he said, and the statement rang with a tinny sort of irony to Hermione, as if there was more he was refusing to accept than her dislike for eggnog. "She'll have one, too, although I'll have a bit more rum in mine. Thank you." The waitress, a pretty girl no more than twenty with strawberry blonde hair, nodded and retreated to the bar.

"That was awfully autocratic of you," Hermione said disapprovingly. "I'll have you know that I don't like eggnog at all."

"Autocratic?" he said, starting to laugh. "Did you just call me autocratic?"

She rolled her eyes. "Would you prefer despotic, then?"

He frowned. "I'm not either. I don't-- Eh, fuck it."

The waitress brought back the eggnogs. Blaise immediately drank about a third of his and then pointed at hers, glaring. "Drink it," he ordered, trying his best to look every bit the despot. She just rolled her eyes again and tapped her fingernail on the tabletop. Her fingers seemed very thin. "Please?" He batted his eyelashes at her and in that moment, he decided that he was going to do anything to get her to drink it. Including employ Draco-level tactics of annoyance. Not that she knew anything about his decisions. She had turned her head to look out the window at the snow.

He took a smaller sip and then a deep breath and began. "You're still at NeuroBrew, aren't you?" The question was rhetorical and she knew it. She looked at him and absently traced the rim of her glass with a fingertip. "You see, that's my point. Most of our year at Hogwarts has been doing basically the same thing since we left school. Draco's still languishing in his own wealth. You've been brewing drugs. Potter's been cavorting off in South America for fifteen years. Corner's been an Unspeakable since I can remember--"

"Michael Corner was killed a few years ago, Blaise," she said as gently as she could, trying to be unobtrusive into his steadily-building fervor.

"Oh-- well. Fine, but he's been dead for a while, and that's consistent." He took a gulp of his eggnog and she assumed it was meant to be seen as punctuation, which was amusing because he surely had more of it on his face than he got in his mouth.

"I'm not sure that counts," she said in a voice choked from trying not to laugh.

"This is everything we wanted, isn't it? This is us Having It All," he said suddenly, somewhat harshly. She started to snigger, losing the battle with biting her lip to keep it bottled up. Apparently, the urge to laugh at him was stronger than she was. "What?" he snapped finally, giving her a look like she was soft in the head.

She only laughed harder. "You've got-- you have a bit of eggnog. Right there." She reached across the table to wipe the spot from his cheek, just missing his lips. He froze, staring at her with a completely different expression from the second before. Her eyes were on her napkin, which she used to get rid of the eggnog for herself, but she glanced up under the pressure of his gaze.

"Palpable," he said. Then he grinned nervously. "I've always wondered what one of those palpable moments felt like."

She raised her eyebrows. "Well, this might be it," she said. "Pay attention. Don't miss anything. You might regret it." He cocked his head and looked at her with consideration. She flushed and admitted, "I've always wanted to say that. It seems like something the somewhat sarcastic heroine of a novel might say."

"Your sarcasm is better than Draco's-- palpable" --his grin became quite fiendish-- "kind, I think."

"Do you want to go shopping?" she asked suddenly. He frowned but gave her the signal to elaborate. "I know it's random to ask, but I have to buy a few last-minute things. I just don't want to end this yet, because I know I won't meet you again until, say, Noël's leaving ceremony at Hogwarts, and at this point that's the last thing I need. So, er, please?"

He smiled and stood. "Very well, but only if you drink your eggnog."

"But I hate eggnog!" she whined.

"Fine. Just one sip," he compromised. "But I'm sure you'll love it so much you drink the rest."

She lifted the glass, looking up at him the whole way. "I'm sure I won't," she said at the last moment. While he was right, the eggnog was very good, she still wasn't sold. It seemed like simply uncommonly good eggnog. Perhaps if it had been chocolate.

His face was stretched out into a rather manic look of pleased expectation. "What do you think? I was right, wasn't I?"

She rolled her eyes and set the glass down. "I remain stoically unmoved, Zabini."

He winced theatrically. "It's back to the surname, is it?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "Up with you, then. We've got shopping to do, haven't we?"

"Yes, I believe we have."

She immediately wished she'd brought that old ugly scarf when they stepped outside. Especially since the wind chose that moment to pick up, apparently just to blow her hair into a gargantuan ball of fuzz. She felt perfectly justified in complaining about it the whole way to Gladrags, too. As soon as they stepped inside the clothier's, she had her wand out and was spelling her mass of hair into a vaguely manageable knot, the end of which she tucked under the collar of her cloak. When she was finished, she shot Blaise a grin and moved toward the back of the store, explaining over her shoulder that she had to buy Exie something for Twelfth Night that she could send to Hogwarts to embarrass him in front of his roommates. "It's only right," she explained. "And anyway, Ron did it last year."

"You could send him a box of chocolates and a truly heartfelt note from mummy, gushing about how much you love him."

She rolled her eyes. "I might have given birth to the boy, but Draco's his Mummy and you know it." That was logic he couldn't argue with. She picked up a pair of underwear with garish dots on it, considered for a moment, and set it back down. "I've said enough times to them; I think Draco's got more estrogen than I have." Blaise snorted and held up a pair of socks with hearts and lips on them. She shook her head. "Too Valentine's-y." He held up a pair with boats and mermaids. She cocked an eyebrow and remained silent.

"I've got a teenage daughter who's never been a tomboy," he defended. "I don't know anything about shopping for a boy."

She gave him a pointed look. "What did you get for Exie, then?"

"A box of illicit potion-making supplies," he said, looking quite proud of himself. "Enough to make Snape's head turn 'round on its neck a few times and then explode."

"Good messy fun," she deadpanned, moving on into the robes section.

"Why don't you get him something from Honeydukes? Or better yet, Zonko's?"

She arched her left eyebrow and waved her hand dismissively. "Chocolate is so impersonal, though."

"Chocolate is heartfelt. I sent it to my last girlfriend all the time... admittedly, that was four years ago, but still." He gave her a boyish grin. "Anyway, we aren't getting anywhere. It's just about twilight and I know the perfect place to watch." Hermione held out her hand and he dragged her cheerfully back out into the snow.

Blaise's perfect place to watch the sky fall down to night turned out to be in the middle of Longbottom Garden at the opposite edge of town. By the time they reached the destined bench, the sky was painted with all the affection and colors of an insect's wing, and Hermione found herself quite spellbound. The trees and plants of the garden were beaten down by frost and snow, and the bare black branches complimented the colors of the sky well, framing it. He cleared away snow and sat, leaning back and snuggling down into his cloak until only his eyes and hair showed. The silvery line of the ancient scar at his hairline dully reflected the twilight. She stood for several minutes, watching as the sky darkened as he watched her. She didn't even seem to notice the cold for some time. It lit up her cheeks with red and her lips were obscured by a cloud every time she exhaled.

Finally, she shivered and he grabbed her hand to pull her down onto the bench beside him, pulling her close. At first she resisted. She had resisted quite a lot of warmth the past few months. Ron, who knew more than Draco but only what she would tell him, told her she was going about it all wrong. He and his sister, who was busy with her two daughters with Seamus Finnigan but still concerned, frequently told her that she was missing something by staying distant. She hosted holiday dinners to compensate but, as Ginny pointed out, a turkey only fills the void until everyone goes home.

She ran through every bit of her life she could think of as she sat there, eventually giving in and resting her cheek against the plane of flesh above the cleft of his armpit. The trolls and Elves and giants of her early Hogwarts years blending into the curses and snows of the later ones, images of all the faces she had known. She thought about all the beautiful words she'd read over the years and all of the potions she had worked to develop. There were flashes of sound-- pulsing dance beats through walls, children's songs, Rhapsody in Blue. There was Draco in gray dress robes next to Ron in blue, and the last memory she had of Harry Potter, receding into the mist in search of whatever it was he never could find. In the end she could only consider what might be wrong with her, wonder why it seemed so elusive.

It wasn't until it was complete darkness that she realized that she felt more than fine for the first time in a year, sitting there in the cold with Blaise Zabini. Eighteen years had managed to quell some of the girlish jig her stomach had done when she would see him in the corridors in school. She shifted to examine his profile. The scar was fainter with time but would never disappear. His hair was too long for his age and the bend at the bridge of his nose belied another brush with violence years earlier. The years between the present moment and the last time she had met him had weathered away his old beauty, or perhaps it was just the dark that softened it up a bit.

In that moment she felt as boundless as the dark itself, sitting there with his arm around her. It started to snow again. Her eyes drifted closed and for the first time in years she felt well enough to sleep.

"This was the best party of all, wasn't it?" he whispered into her hair. "Wasn't it, though?"


End file.
